Seize the Night

make with his deformed hand, striking such solid blows that his nose crunched and his lips split against his teeth.
    Sasha was still pleading with him, though she must have realized that Father Tom Eliot was beyond her reach, beyond the help of anyone in this world.
    As if trying to scourge the devil from himself, he began to claw his cheeks, digging his fingernails deep, and with those pincers, he went at his right eye as though to pluck it out of himself.
    Feathers suddenly whirled through the air, spinning around the priest, and I was briefly confused, astonished, until I realized that Sasha had fired the .38. The pillow couldn't have entirely muffled the shot, but I'd heard nothing other than Father Tom's wail drilling my skull.
    The priest jerked from the impact of the slug, but he didn't drop. He didn't bite off that skirling lament or stop tearing at himself.
    I heard the second shot— whump —and the third.
    Tom Eliot crumpled to the floor, lay twitching, briefly kicked his legs as if he were a dog chasing rabbits in his sleep, and then was motionless, dead.
    Sasha had relieved him from his agony but had also saved him from the self-destruction that he believed would condemn his immortal soul to eternal damnation.
    So much had happened since the priest had thrown the chair at Roosevelt and the vanity bench at Sasha that I was surprised to hear Elton John still singing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” Before dropping the pillow, Sasha turned toward the television and fired one more round, blowing out the screen.
    As satisfying as it was to put an end to the inappropriately uplifting music and images of The Lion King , we were all alarmed by the total darkness that claimed the room following a shower of sparks from the terminated TV. We assumed that the becoming priest must be dead, because any of us would be worm food, for sure, with three .38 slugs in the chest, but as Bobby had noted the previous night, there were no rules here on the eve of the Apocalypse.
    When I reached for my flashlight, it was no longer snugged under my belt. I must have dropped it during the struggle.
    In my imagination, the dead priest had already self-resurrected and had become something that an entire division of marines couldn't kill.
    Bobby switched on one of the nightstand lamps.
    The dead man was still nothing more than a man, and still dead, a ruined heap that didn't bear close inspection.
    Holstering the .38, Sasha turned away from the body and stood with her shoulders slumped, head hung, one hand covering her face, collecting herself.
    The lamp featured a three-way switch, and Bobby clicked it to the lowest level of light. The shade was rose-colored silk, which left the room still mostly in shadow but bright enough to prevent us from succumbing to an attack of the brain twitches.
    I spotted my flashlight on the floor, snatched it up, and jammed it under my belt again.
    Trying to quiet my breathing, I went to the nearer of two windows. The drapes were a heavy tapestry, as thick as an elephant's hide, with a blackout liner. This would have suppressed the sound of gunfire almost as effectively as the plush pillow through which Sasha had fired the revolver.
    I pulled aside one drape and peered out at the lamp lit street. No one was pointing or running toward the Stanwyk residence. No traffic had stopped in front of the house. In fact, the street appeared to be deserted.
    As far as I can recall, none of us said anything until we were all the way downstairs and in the kitchen again, where the solemn cat was waiting for us in the light of the oil lamp. Perhaps we simply didn't say anything memorable, but I think that we did, indeed, make our way through the house in numbed silence.
    Bobby stripped off his Hawaiian shirt and black cotton pullover, which were damp with blood. Along his left side were four slashes, wounds inflicted by the cleric's teratoid hand.
    That was a useful word from my mom's world of genetic science. It meant something monstrous, described an organism or a portion of an organism deformed because of damaged genetic material. As a kid, I was always interested in my mother's research and theories, because she was, as she liked to put it, searching for God in the clockworks, which I thought must be the most important work anyone could do. But God prefers to see what we can make of ourselves on our own, and He doesn't make it easy for us to find Him on this side of death. Along the way, when we think we've